


Christmas in July

by TheSpecialist



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: F/M, R/H - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-08
Updated: 2020-04-08
Packaged: 2021-03-02 05:21:36
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,168
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23549827
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TheSpecialist/pseuds/TheSpecialist
Summary: Ron and Hermione contend with the twins' latest invention the day before Bill and Fleur's wedding.
Relationships: Hermione Granger & Ron Weasley, Hermione Granger/Ron Weasley, R/H
Comments: 2
Kudos: 35





	Christmas in July

Silas Marner had just returned to Lantern Yard and the sun hung a few degrees lower in the sky. 

Hermione had been reading up in Ron’s room, as far away as possible from the hustle and bustle several floors below. Bedlam might as well have been the tenth member of the Weasley family, but things had reached a particularly fevered pitch in the last few weeks as Bill and Fleur’s marriage loomed. She knew she should be making herself more useful, but between the endless cleaning and shouting, the constant trickle of bad news from the outside world, and the rather grim task of preparing for their mission, she had really needed an hour to herself. 

Now that hour had come and gone. With a sigh she closed her book and heaved herself up off of Ron’s bed, where she had been reclining as she read. It was, after all, the only place to sit in his room, aside from Harry’s cot, which was covered with Harry’s things, and anyway Ron’s bed was by the window. Better light.

Reluctantly she left the little attic room and made her way down the crooked stairs wincing, fully expecting to meet anarchy at the bottom. Instead she found that in her absence things had become oddly quiet, considering the wedding which had turned the house upside down all summer was tomorrow. She wondered if perhaps everyone was setting up in the backyard or else out getting supplies for Harry’s birthday dinner.

She padded barefoot over to the kitchen where Ron was alone at the sink drying dishes by hand. He hadn’t seemed to hear her come in, and she took the opportunity to openly admire him for a while. He was hunched over slightly, and the muscles of his back stretched and contracted under his too-small t-shirt as he worked. Ron’s clothes had always been too short, but now that constant quidditch practice had put some muscle on his gangly frame, they were also frequently too tight—much to Hermione’s personal delight or torture, depending on the day. This afternoon, as he reached up to set a saucer on the top shelf and revealed a plane of pearly skin above low-slung jeans, it was delightful.

After a moment’s indulgence she shook her head to clear the cobwebs of lust and recalibrated herself to actually talking to him. She had long since accepted her attraction to Ron; more recently, she had been able to admit to herself that she was probably in love with him. But conceding these things internally was a far cry from trusting him with the information. She had made something like a first move last year by inviting him to Slughorn’s party, and that had been an unmitigated disaster. The ball was firmly in his court; whether he did anything with it remained to be seen. Lately he had seemed a bit bolder—setting his hand at the small of her back sometimes as they squeezed past each other in the crowded Burrow, offering his jacket when they stayed outside chatting past dark. She wanted to believe that these were signs of his affection but concluded that they were more likely occasioned by developing maturity, as well as the confidence she imagined he derived from being taller and more gorgeous than ever. 

She sidled up to stand next to him at the sink where he was wiping a chipped tureen. “Doing things the muggle way,” she observed.

Ron smiled. “Figured it would take longer. I’m hoping to make it to dinner without Mum haulin’ me back out in the sun to re-sod the bloody lawn or something.” He nudged her shoulder conspiratorially. She took note.

“Where is she, anyway?” Hermione asked, taking the tureen from him and placing it in a lower cupboard. “Where’s everyone?”

“Last I saw she was barkin’ orders at the others out back. She remembered the dishes still needed doing for Harry’s party, and I jumped at the chance to get away.”

“At least you’re still technically contributing,” she said. “I’ve been upstairs hiding for the last hour. It’s all a bit overwhelming, isn’t it?”

“Yeah, but it’ll be over tomorrow,” he offered. “Suppose I’ll miss it when we’ve…”

He trailed off, but Hermione could imagine what he had been about to say. They would be leaving for the Horcrux hunt right after the wedding. Darts of regret pricked at her chest. Perhaps she should have been more appreciative of the occasion to worry about champagne flutes and beef skewers with Devon Blue. At least the Burrow’s chaos was rarely life-threatening. What if she never got to experience it again?

“Stop thinking so much, Hermione,” said Ron, reading her mind. He put his arm around her shoulder and gave it a squeeze. “It’ll be alright. We’ll be back here avoiding Mum before you can say Jack Robinson.”

She knew he had to be less sure about all that than he sounded, which only made her appreciate the effort more. She thought she should reward him by taking the conversation in a less dramatic direction.

“The wedding should be fun,” she tried.

Ron scoffed and picked up a wet sauce boat. “I guess. Not really my idea of fun.”

She frowned at this. If she was honest, she hadn’t particularly enjoyed the few weddings she had attended in her life, but then Ron hadn’t been there. She had been looking forward all summer to going to one—well, not with him but, at least, at the same time as him. It was strangely disappointing to learn that he wasn’t excited about it.

Before she could decide whether to chide him for being so unenthusiastic about his own brother’s wedding, there came a light tinkling noise from overhead, and Hermione looked up to see a glittery bundle of green leaves and milky white berries materialize above them.

“Is that…?”

“Meandering Mistletoe,” Ron sighed, setting down his tea towel and turning to face her. “Roams around your Christmas party appearing over random people. Fred and George set it loose in the house the other day to test it out.” He grimaced resignedly and shrugged his shoulders.

Hermione found it unsettling how not unsettled he was. She continued to eye the sparkly bunch warily. “When does it go away?”

“Dunno,” answered Ron, as the sprigs shook lightly and emitted a tinkling sound again as if growing impatient with them. “But if you don’t…comply, there can be consequences.”

“Like what?” Hermione asked, her voice rising in pitch. Wasn’t normal mistletoe frightening enough?

“Well,” said Ron, “you know the twins. The other day when Ginny refused to kiss Bill it doused them both with water and exploded.” 

“No!”

“’Fraid so. And I reckon they got off easy,” he continued, leaning against the sink and scratching his chin thoughtfully as he regarded his brothers’ latest invention. “There are probably loads of different penalties. Would make it more entertaining.”

“Entertaining,” Hermione repeated faintly. The mistletoe had begun to vibrate. “Ron, the wedding’s tomorrow! I don’t fancy showing up completely bald or something, do you?” He merely laughed at this idea. She took a different tack. “Your mum will kill us if it makes a mess!” She began to back away from him, but to her horror the branch merely grew to fill the distance between them and shook more violently.

“Yeah, that won’t do it,” said Ron, walking toward her to close the gap. The mistletoe returned to its normal size but continued to shake, tinkling madly now. The sound was starting to drive her insane.

“Oh, Ron, do something!”

“Yeah, alright then.”

Reflecting on this moment later, Hermione would realize that she should have seen it coming—what else had she expected him to do? Nevertheless, she was dumbstruck when Ron stepped forward and reached for her face. He, too, seemed suddenly surprised to find himself in this position, as though it had only belatedly dawned on him that this was where mistletoe often led. He froze, hands hovering in midair on either side of her head, and stared blankly forward, mouth slightly open, like a wind-up toy soldier whose mechanism had run out. He swallowed thickly, and glanced up as the mistletoe released a high-pitched whistle like a boiling kettle. She saw him steel himself before bringing his hands to rest along her jaw. Then he bent down to lightly brush his lips against hers.

Hermione’s eyes shut automatically, and soon her other senses abandoned her as well. Cotton filled her ears. Her legs walked off somewhere without her; there was nothing for them to hold up now anyway, her body only seemed to exist where it met Ron’s. She was no more than a pair of lips with his pressed against them, a chin held gently in his somewhat rough hands, and some skin where his warm breath blew across it. He was immaculately still, letting his mouth simply linger upon hers like they were a painting of a kiss, one that gave a remarkably convincing impression of motion—of the electricity arcing between them, the blood pulsing where they touched, the tectonic drift of an ancient friendship. 

Self-consciousness eventually wriggled its way up to the front of her mind, and just as she started to wonder how long was too long not to open her mouth or put her hands on him or do whatever she was supposed to do in this situation, something tiny and cold landed on her cheek. As she considered the new sensation, Ron pulled away, and when she opened her eyes he was looking up at the spot where the mistletoe had been—where it had disappeared, and left behind a little shower of glistening snow. 

“Wow,” Ron breathed, letting go of her chin.

“Yeah,” she agreed, unless he meant the snow.

“Well.” He straightened up fully and cleared his throat. “That did the trick.”

“Yes,” Hermione agreed again, her mouth struggling to remember how to do anything other than kiss him. “Thank you. I mean, good.” What was he smirking at? “That is to say—yes, that did the trick,” she repeated, feeling like a malfunctioning android. It was no use trying to think straight. He had done something to her, had somehow sucked her brain out through her mouth and replaced it with dryer lint—or a swarm of bees, judging by the incessant buzzing that now filled her skull. Her legs were leaden and wobbly at the same time and her chest seemed to be trying to turn itself inside out. She thought of her pale yellow knickers for some reason, then wondered what color knickers Ron was wearing.

Boxers, she corrected herself.

“Huh?” said Ron.

She looked up at him wide-eyed. Had she said that out loud?

“What?” she said.

Ron laughed and shook his head. “Never mind,” and he reached out to brush some snow off her cheek with the pad of his thumb.

It was too much to be touched again by him, and so casually, and Hermione took a startled step backward. “Well,” she said, swinging her arms for something to do, “I’ll leave you to your drying.” She continued backing away from him, maneuvering clumsily around the kitchen table toward the garden, pausing briefly to apologize to a chair she accidentally kicked. Upon reaching the door she decided, psychotically, to have one last go at coherent speech. “Crisis averted,” she pronounced jauntily, and gave a bizarre little salute, a gesture she had never before in her life performed and one she knew immediately she never would again. She attempted to blow an unruly curl out of her face, and noted with annoyance that Ron seemed entirely relaxed as he leaned against the worktop and watched her with his arms folded over his chest, clearly trying not to laugh. She turned and walked out into the yard, thankful that at least she hadn’t tripped over the threshold.

She made straight for the pond, marching right through several Weasleys. (“That snow in your hair, Hermione?” Fred called after her.) She thought about diving off the end of the dock to cool down; maybe she would sprout gills and just stay in the water forever. Stranger things had happened—Ron had kissed her! There was something in the air today, she thought, aside from Meandering Mistletoe. They had caught Harry and Ginny snogging earlier, and now she and Ron—but, of course, Harry and Ginny were completely different; they loved each other. Ron had only kissed her to avoid being set on fire or turned purple by the twins’ mad invention. It meant nothing to him. 

It probably meant nothing to him. 

She closed her eyes and recalled his full lips on hers. It felt real. It had felt real. Maybe it was.

She allowed herself one smile, her reflection in the pond its only witness. Then she turned and walked back toward the house. There was a wedding tomorrow, and plenty of work to be done.


End file.
